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Plea to Expand Enrollment at Top Colleges

By Jacques Steinberg February 3, 2011 2:28 pmFebruary 3, 2011 2:28 pm

9:28 a.m. | Updated The authors have written a follow-up post, in response to some of your many comments. It can be read here.

Sandy Baum, professor emerita of economics at Skidmore College, and Michael McPherson, president of the Spencer Foundation, which finances education research, returned from a recent admissions conference at the University of Southern California, still talking about an idea that, they had suggested to the participants, might ease the pressures on those seeking seats at the nation’s most prestigious colleges.

“We invited the assembled admissions leaders” — who included Bill Fitzsimmons of Harvard, Jeffrey Brenzel of Yale, and Richard Shaw of Stanford — “to consider one simple and obvious step toward relieving the pressure: expand your enrollment,” they write on the Web site of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The immediate response?

“Our friends and colleagues at the meeting found it easy to contain their enthusiasm for our idea,” Ms. Baum and Mr. McPherson write.

The Choice, by contrast, is more than willing to give the two educators the floor. How might such a proposal benefit applicants to what Ms. Baum and Mr. McPherson refer to as the “Top 20″ American colleges and universities?

They write:

Most of these institutions have endowments per student that far exceed those at other very high-quality institutions. If they were to increase the size of their undergraduate student bodies by some percentage (say half), virtually all of them would still be at the top of the list of institutions ranked by wealth per student, and their admissions queues would still be out the door.

Increasing the number of undergraduate places in these institutions seems like an obvious step. Twenty of the wealthiest, most selective private colleges enroll a total of about 20,000 first-year students each year. If they enrolled 30,000, there would be a significant reduction in the number of rejection letters sent to highly qualified students.

What impact might such an effort have on colleges and universities that are still competitive, but not quite as selective? The authors write:

The added students at the top places would almost all come from places a little further down the food chain. So those places would also have to reach further. And that in turn would lower the admissions pressure a little further down the line.

Ms. Baum and Mr. McPherson are nothing if not realists, and realize that opposition to such a proposal would probably be fierce at the most selective colleges. They write:

We suspect that the main obstacle to getting a hearing for an idea like this is that a step in this direction is clearly not in the narrow self-interest of elite institutions — a reminder that ultimately the current system, for all its travails, serves these institutions very well indeed. We are far from claiming that our idea is the best one to pursue or try.

But if leaders at top places are waiting for a solution that will not require any sacrifice on their part, they are going to be waiting a long time.

What do readers of The Choice — admissions officers and professors, as well as parents, students and counselors — think of this idea?

Meanwhile, to get a sense of the growing size of the bottleneck that Ms. Baum and Mr. McPherson are seeking to ease, please look at The Choice’s just-published tally of applications to nearly 100 colleges and universities this year, as compared to last.

This is the best idea I’ve heard in years!! Support it with two thumbs up!!
To add up to the facts, top universities and colleges are also the wealthiest, so expanding their enrollment by even more than half wouldn’t be a problem.

While this seems like a good idea from the eyes of a parent or student, it will change the institution significantly. I attended a small liberal arts college and I was able to learn so much more in a small classroom (5-15 students). It’s no different than elementary school- you want your child to be in a small class so they’ll receive more one-on-one attention, right? This is not a concept that changes with age.

It would be interesting to know if admissions at these highly selective colleges have kept pace with student population growth over the past 3 decades. If not, perhaps Bill Gates can start a Gates University which will definitely be among the top colleges in a generation.

1. campuses are more than just $$$$. The physical plants of nearly every major university has long since been hemmed in by development–whether sprawling Columbia in Manhattan or tiny Amherst in rural Mass.

2. to be a snide, if you really wanted to attend a top 20 school, you should’ve studied harder.

3. attending a non-top 20 school isn’t the end of the world.

4. if you really, really want to attend a top 20 school, there’s always graduate school or transferring. Top 20 grad schools are filled, filled, filled with lots of extremely qualified, successful students who survived the indignity *sarcasm* of going to a non-top 20 school.

So…do we build more dorms, academic facilities and hire more faculty, too, or do we just add water to the soup? We need to consider whether existing endowments can withstand the strain as the capital outflow would be enormous if the notion is to increase scale across the board.

The demographics are pretty clear, whether and for how long they will continue…not so much.

Finally, and this is meant rhetorically rather than xenophobically, might we want to consider either reserving more places for Americans or asking our foreign students to commit additional human or other capital in exchange for the privilege of taking up a seat in an American institution of higher learning.

This is plain silly. Who wants bigger class size? And more kids squeezed into dorm rooms? And jam-packed cafeterias? And more competition within the university to get into the best classes? This proposition would make everything worse. There are plenty of other schools–people are just snobs if they think Harvard, etc. is the be-all-and-end-all. I can’t believe people actually think this should be taken seriously.

This proposal is both pointless and unnecessary. Instead of manipulating admissions percentages at the very top schools–and thereby altering their character and quality– by letting “nature take its course”, many excellent students will continue to congregate at other fine schools. This will cause these other colleges to improve further, since the “quality” of the student body is the most significant variable among colleges–there are more than enough great professors to go around and they can be found in abundance at the majority of American colleges.

Expanding schools like MIT or Stanford? Maybe. Expanding small liberal arts colleges, like Sandy Baum’s Skidmore, or Amherst, Bowdoin, Wesleyan, etc… that completely changes and eliminates the entire point of attending a small LAC – the intimacy and sense of community, shared among students and faculty alike.

Thumbs down. Class sizes need to be kept under control. Nobody wants more campus construction projects. Nobody wants to wait forever for food in the cafeteria. Focus more on hiring faculty members so classes can remain small. I also would think that there’d be even more applications if the class sizes were to expand because people will go “Ohh! 500 more spots! Now maybe I have a better chance of getting in…”

And I agree with one of the comments about foreign students. While I do think it’s wonderful to have an additional perspective in the classroom, I just wonder why let these foreign students come, study, and then go home after, with those precious degrees? Keep American degrees in America.

As a parent whose son has applied to, among other places, Brown, B.U., Northwestern, and N.Y.U., I think it is a great idea. I knew this whole process is a crap shoot (actually a roulette wheel), but seeing these figures is quite sobering.

As a faculty member at an institution that trains graduate students, I think it is a great idea because it would (I hope) require expansion of the faculties at elite universities, and give more hope to graduate students of landing jobs at challenging institutions.

As a graduate of one of the institutions with over 30,000 applications, I would not worry about “lowering the quality” of the student bodies. We know that places like Harvard and Columbia, after admitting, say, 1000, could take another 500 without any “fall of” whatsoever. And, their relative level of selectivity would remain secure. They needn’t lose sleep over being seen as having become “too easy to get into.”

How on earth are the colleges to feed and house 30% or 50% more students? How would they pay for the extra classrooms and professors needed to keep class sizes small? And where would they get the space for all this expansion? (A professor of economics suggested this???)

Instead of expanding enrollment, we need to expand society’s idea of what a great school is. People need to be informed about a wide array of excellent colleges–that is how reputations are built. Perhaps this should start with the New York Times. Less elitism would help our children immensely. I’ve been reading Jacques Steinberg’s articles for a while now, and thy are way too focused on the most elite colleges and how to get into them. It would be great to hear more about the up and coming “colleges that change lives” and their merits. More substance, less horse race.

“Only one or two students out of every 100 displayed the level of mastery that the federal panel governing the tests defines as advanced, the government said.” This was written in an article for the New York Times entitled: “Few Students Show proficiency in Science, Test Show,” by Sam Dillon. That elite institutions should expand their enrollment to better accomodate the pressures of students seeking enrolment at their respective universities is nonsense. More students aren’t becoming more intelligent, and qualified –more students are applying.

Yeah, I must agree with some previous commentators that this is a terrible idea and misses the entire problem with selective admissions.

I’ve personally done a fair amount of research on college admissions and the prep-school factor, and have found that the real problems at these highly selective colleges are twofold:

1) Unfair connections between NE prep schools and their elite college counterparts

and

2) The AMOUNT of applications each student is sending out.

A much more intelligent solution to these problems would be to—provided, of course, that there was some way to regulate these elitist behemoths—limit the number of applications a student can send out.

This would make the college search process more useful, and the choices to apply more intimate. Also, it would reduce application numbers at these colleges without compromising the academic quality of applicants.

The problem with this post is its justification for expanding enrollment–to relieve the pressures of low acceptance rates. However, does this action justify securing a greater proportion of a top-20 university’s budget to undergraduate enrollment, rather than addressing the needs of its other schools (graduate, professional, etc)?

The US already offers substantial access to a college education with so many universities and community colleges. Despite the myth of prestige in attending a top-20 university, at the undergraduate level, the quality of teaching is less important than a student’s decision to apply himself, learn and excel in his studies, and build substantial relationships with his professors and classmates.

If high school students can’t stand the admission pressures now, they will simply be unable to handle the tough job market and egregiously low admission rates in graduate schools.

And if your argument is that more students should have the opportunity to attend an ivy-league school or its peer institution, you are suggesting that the responsibility of improving the quality of a college education lies in the hands of the top-20 schools.

Before making significant changes to the budget, universities (if they choose to run their schools differently) should do more research into what fields of study are lacking scholars. For example, our country is running low on primary care doctors and nurses, and much of the health care work force comes from foreign doctors. Why not use the money to build a solid new generation of health care providers to will be able to take care of the aging baby boomers?

There’s a reason for why colleges have chosen to maintain their class sizes besides their “narrow self-interest.” However, at the same time, I do agree that colleges should not send admissions advertisements to students who are unlikely to be qualified.

And Princeton did exactly this, and it didn’t really ease anything. Plus it takes years of planning and lots of careful tending to all the other facilities to be sure that what is already good about the school experience is not lost in the process of expansion.

One of may favorite parts about going to a liberal arts school is that there are only 2,500 students. Enlarging the size of a college community would fundamentally alter the “feel” of a school. I like that I know a large portion of my small school.

At the same time, there are plenty of colleges who are struggling to fill beds.

It is an interesting idea but one I doubt most small liberal arts schools would accept. They like their current sizes and I doubt that they would be receptive to 100 new students. I think those of us who assist high school students with their college search need to do a better job of helping students discover some of the other wonderful small liberal arts schools in the country. The top 20 colleges and universities aren’t necessarily the best fit for a lot of students anyway.

C’mon, Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson – get real – don’t you know that top colleges have determined that there are exactly 20,000 bonafide future leaders in the selective applicant pool? Didn’t you get the memo – it is well known by those in the know that the top 20 USNWR college admissions deans are the true and only keepers of the knowledge of how to pick tomorrow’s leaders. Surely you have to accept their wisdom – surely you don’t think there could possibly be as many as 30,000 future leaders out there? Otherwise these top 20 colleges would be bending over backwards to admit the other 10,000 of them!!!

But seriously, what is needed is some kind of independent marketing initiative to dispel the myth of meritocracy and the corollary myth that the “top 20″ colleges have the market cornered on excellence in education. Maybe the second and third and forth and fifth 20 could go together in a guerilla counter-offensive. Expose the top 20 for what they are sans the elitism: like all other colleges, places where students and teachers get together to learn. And what is also needed is improved college counseling, to counter the marketing-driven notion that all students should apply to uber-reaches, just because, you never know, you might get in at the top, and of course your life will be infinitely better if you do.

Yes, there is admittedly still an old-boy network in the elite that is alive and well, so if you are really about that and want that, go for it. Lots of power and money concentrated in the elite, no doubt about it. But for vast numbers of less-than-top-20 college graduates, taking knowledge, smarts, initiative plus new friends and connections gained in college into the world after school, usually translates into a pretty darned good life, and often translates into leadership, regardless of alma mater.

State Governments need to prioritize support for their public universities to provide a high quality and relatively inexpensive option for students across the nation. This would do more to reduce the pressure on the top 20.